Work Text:
Bone deep exhaustion tugged at Matt as he sank into the welcoming embrace of cool silk sheets. Outside, the gentle buzz of the city rose with the sun. Another night’s sleep sunk. He finally had a name, but the man who owned it was a ghost. Fisk. Three nights of searching for leads since then, and he still had none. Lack of sleep was taking a toll on his body, his mind. The pain in his side, courtesy of the Russians, reminded him he couldn’t afford to make another mistake. Copper coated the back of his throat when he breathed in—the wound kept opening up every night, bleeding after he leapt a gap between rooftops, stitches splitting under someone’s fist. Claire wouldn’t have been happy about it, but he’d re-sutured it and kept it free of infection so far.
Pain like this used to keep him up, nagging him just enough to keep him on the edge of consciousness. Matt found it easier to ignore now. But tonight was as bad as he remembered, trying to fall asleep and doing nothing but wasting an hour lying in the dark like his body’s forgotten how. He felt almost drunk for lack of sleep, mind fuzzy, head reeling at every movement he made. Eventually snatches of sleep claimed him in between tossing and turning. The lapping waves carried him deeper, to a place interrupted by faint sobs and screams and the sounds of wet squelches.
Matt woke out of a nightmare tainted by the taste of blood to find his sheets sticky with it. His questing fingers discovered the bandages on his chest had come loose. It was late, his alarm squawking insistently. Memory came to him slower than it should, suspended in molasses—Going into the office today. His body protested as he showered and dressed, but Matt couldn’t afford to take another day off. Not after he’d been the one to push them into taking Healy’s case, not when he already took so many days off or came in late because of his nightly activities. Reluctantly, he rose to shower away the traces of sleep.
Work went easier than he thought it would, the day quiet and full of paperwork. Besides greeting him as he came in, Foggy had been quiet too, absorbed in his own work. Karen hadn’t come in, away for some appointment she’d been vague about. Late afternoon sunlight was coming through the windows and warming the air when Matt heard Foggy shut his laptop, a soft snick. “Matt! I’m going to grab something. You coming?”
A decline rose to his lips quickly, “I’m going to—“
“Sure you are! Come on,” Foggy said, and Matt couldn’t help a half-smile.
“What are we grabbing?” Matt asked as they made their way down the street, wistfully thinking of something containing caffeine.
“Karen and I found this new place. Best—“
Matt took another step, and there was air where he thought level concrete would be, a curb that is a drop of mere inches, something he’d normally never miscalculate—and then he was falling, too slow to find his footing, too much counterbalancing. Between one moment and the next he was caught, enveloped by a pair of arms that were indistinguishable from a baseball bat to his bruised ribs and the deep wound whose stitches he’d probably ripped for the second time.
Matt flinched away from the painful grip, but he only made it worse as he tried and failed to right himself, and found himself leaning helplessly into the agonizingly supportive embrace. He managed to bite back a groan, the taste and sound of blood roaring overwhelming his senses. If he wasn’t in so much pain right now he’d be humiliated by this, but as his senses trickled back in he finds the scent of familiar aftershave and stale coffee, tainted by bitter adrenaline but unmistakable, and Foggy’s worried voice, “—att?”
“I’m fine.” His chest was heaving, voice wavering: he probably didn’t look fine, and Foggy confirmed it with his heartbeat. Matt finally shrugged him off, hoping he didn’t appear unsteady as he felt.
“You’re not,” he said. “I’m worried about you lately, Matt—“
“It’s just—the last few days. The case, and the… I just haven’t slept well, and I had a lapse in concentration, and I tripped, Foggy. I’m fine.” The case I made us take. The one I used to get Fisk’s name. Lying had become something he was at ease with, a part of him. He’d done it every day since the accident. Hidden his abilities, even to the people he was closest to. Since that first night he had gone out to answer calls only he could hear, face masked in black, it had slowly grown into something different. Something that kept weighing more and more until it was an ache in his chest whenever Foggy was near.
Foggy clearly wanted to pursue the subject, challenge his obvious evasion, but something made him hold back. Matt felt almost disappointed when all he said was, “You should take the rest of the day, then. Catch up on sleep.”
The smell of blood was so thick it choked him. Healy’s terrified heartbeat ramped up in the seconds before he killed himself, reverberated through the earth, through Matt. Then it was replaced by the crunching squelch of bone and brains and blood. The steady drip of blood mocked the absence of a beating heart.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Matt jerked awake to someone at the door. Knocking. He’d fallen asleep with his computer on his lap, sheafs of paper strewn across the table and the floor beside him. A haze that even the sharp ache in his side couldn’t clear shrouded his thoughts.
“Matt!” Foggy called from the hallway. His voice is accompanied by more pounding.
“Yeah,” Matt replied, to get him to stop. “Coming.”
The smell of acrid-sweet ointment only caught his attention on the way to answer the door, and he realized he’d left a wad of old bandages on the bathroom counter. Matt backtracked hastily, tossed the bandages and stowed the roll of tape and gauze under the sink. He cast about anything else, any more evidence of his double life, but there wasn’t any. It was safe, locked up and tucked in the bottom of a chest, and it was going to stay that way.
Foggy swept in without invitation as soon as Matt unlatched the door, pausing to stare in the direction of the mess of paperwork in the living room on his way to the kitchenette.
“I know,” Matt said, before Foggy could mention it. The room filled with palpable tension as soon as the words left his mouth.
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Foggy replied. The plastic container he set on the counter was still warm, full of liquid. Soup. Matt waited while Foggy fiddled with the strap on his laptop bag, unslung it and propped it against the leg of a chair.
“I know you said you’re fine, but—,” I don’t believe you, “—soup’s always good.”
“Thanks.”
“Matt, if something’s wrong—“
“You’d have my back. I know. You’re my best friend, Foggy.” His heart stuttered, clenched. Matt couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth. Didn’t want to.
“Right.” In the close quarters, Matt sensed the minute stretch of Foggy’s facial muscles, at odds with the resigned slump of shoulders: a strained smile. Matt knew at least part of the truth; Foggy would have his back, was the best friend he could ask for. And Matt wasn’t. He would have to keep lying. Couldn’t expose him to the danger that knowing the truth would bring. It was worth the wedge between them if Foggy was safe. So he donned yet another mask.
“Maybe I have been under the weather.” Matt certainly felt that way now, throat aching, chest sore. “Nothing some rest and a bowl of soup can’t fix.”
Foggy’s body language opened up a little, hopeful. Hook, line…
Matt acquiesced to Foggy’s request for him to sit on the couch and wait as he fixed two bowls of soup. They ate together in companionable silence interspersed by the tap of fingers across a keyboard, presumably work that Foggy was catching up on. In an attempt to distract himself from the sharpening pang in his chest, Matt reached for his own work, sinking into something familiar and easy rather than continue scouring the web for mentions of Fisk. By now, he was certain that avenue was fruitless.
Thump-thump-thump went Healy’s panicked heart again. Before it could stop, Matt surfaced to a steadier beat, clung to it while he shook off the vestiges of sleep and slowly became aware of Foggy sliding the computer out of his hands. “Sorry,” he murmured, struggling to sit up. Hadn’t meant to fall asleep.
“Don’t be,” Foggy said, hesitated, and then wrapped Matt in a tight hug. He let himself lean into it, found comfort in the slow pulse of Foggy’s heart while his side screamed at him. “It was a rough week.”
…and sinker.